'Well' sculpture arrives in Oak Park's Austin Gardens

A well often can be found in a park, but the fixture in Oak Park's Austin Gardens is a three-piece sculpture by a Romanian-born artist that will be on display for the next three years.

Leonard Ursachi's exhibition "Well" will be on view in Austin Gardens, 167 Forest Ave., through 2015. While the sculpture — a well, bucket and lever to place the bucket into and take out of the well — already is at the site, an opening reception will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13. The artist and members of the Park District of Oak Park's Art Advisory Committee, who selected the sculpture, will attend.

"Well" was exhibited from October 2011 through August 2012 in Brooklyn, New York, where Ursachi lives, under the New York City Parks' public art program.

Ursachi's contract to display the sculpture in Brooklyn was ending and he was looking for a new home for it, according to Neil Adams, project manager for the park district. Ursachi knows of Oak Park and submitted an application on the district's website, Adams said.

The advisory committee then reviewed and approved the application and the park district executed the agreement, he said. A private donation from the law firm of Pomerantz Grossman Hufford Dahlstrom & Gross LLP, which is based in New York but has an office in Chicago, is paying a commission to the artist and for costs to move the sculpture in and out of the park.

Austin Gardens was selected as the location for "Well," Adams said, "because we thought it was a suitable place. (The artist) was looking for a similar location as he had in New York — a natural park setting." Another art piece, "Pillow," is south of "Well" in the park, he said.

That part of Austin Gardens near Forest Avenue is open, and the sculpture's location will not affect the festival theater area, Adams said. The well and lever were disassembled in New York and put together in Oak Park, he said. The bucket was one piece.

Forest Park resident Wendell Dew, who rode his bicycle last week to the park where he was reading a book, said of the piece, "It's very interesting."

Ursachi, in a press release, said, "The well is a shared resource and gathering place. Its iconography is mythic — the source from which life and knowledge spring; a receptacle for our dreams and desires. I'm interested in the significance of the well today."

"There are still communities that depend on wells, the health of which is affected by conditions that originate both locally and across the globe — pollution, industrial waste, climate change, wars," he added.

"Well" consists of translucent, blue resin with plastic water bottles placed inside. The mold for the blocks was created from cobblestone he salvaged from a New York street. The bottom is a mirror in which viewers can see their reflections. He made the base, bucket and lever from driftwood he salvaged from the East River, near his Brooklyn studio.

He was born in Romania and defected in 1980. He has exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition in 2008 at Romania's National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. He has exhibited temporary public art in New York.